Dead Simple Tips for Taking Better Smartphone Photos
- As a Photographer, These are the 13 Apps I Wouldn't Leave the House Without
- Explore Photography Post-Processing Tips
- Get the Specs and Pricing on the Sirui Mobile Phone Light-Compensating Lamp
- Mobile Photography Tricks You Can't Miss
With the camera technology that's now included in smartphones, it makes sense to use your smartphone as your everyday camera.
And while today's smartphone cameras are much more capable devices, ultimately, how you use your smartphone as a camera is what matters most.
With that in mind, here's a few simple smartphone photography tricks that will have a big impact on the quality of the photos you take.
Go Easy on the Editing
Sometimes, simplicity is best when it comes to photography.
That's certainly true of how you compose the shot, but it's also true of how you edit the photos you take.
Post-processing isn't intended to be a huge undertaking that is required to try to correct all the mistakes you made when you took the shot.
Rather, editing your images should be fairly straightforward, with minor touch-ups and adjustments to bring out the quality of the shot.
In other words, overedited images just look strained, and, well, overedited!
Tons of noise, unnatural colors, contrast that's visibly off, and other factors are dead giveaways that the original shot was a tough one to work with.
Instead, strive to get everything as close to perfect as possible when you take the photo, and then use apps like VSCO or Snapseed (for iOS or Android) to fine-tune the details.
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Get Better Lighting
The built-in flash on your smartphone is, in a word, terrible.
Light from the built-in flash is white, harsh, and washes out the subject while casting deep shadows in the shot as well.
It's not a good look...
But just like with a DSLR or mirrorless camera, you can use an external flash to get better, more pleasing light.
Sirui's Mobile Phone Light-Compensating Lamp helps fill in the shadows with pleasing light without washing out the subject.
The LED lamp includes eight cool color-toned lights and six warm color-toned lights with color temperature and brightness controls that help you customize the light output for your specific subject.
For example, if shooting a portrait indoors under incandescent lighting, which tends to be yellow in tone, you can use the lamp's cool lights to compensate, giving the shot more light and a corrected white balance as well.
The light attaches to your phone with Sirui lens adapter, which means you can use the light in conjunction with a Sirui add-on smartphone photography lens.
The light has an hour of battery life for extended shooting, and a micro USB charging port for quick charging, too.
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Fill the Frame
When you're in the process of composing your smartphone photos, don't just stand back far away from the subject.
Instead, put the quality of today's smartphone camera lenses to good use by filling the frame with the subject.
Not only does filling the frame give viewers a more intimate look at the subject, but it also allows you to offer a different perspective that the viewer might not have seen before.
What's more, since you're closer to the subject, you can highlight details that might otherwise go unnoticed...
A texture here, a pattern there, perhaps a color or even the way the light plays off a certain area of the shot.
In the end, creating better smartphone photos starts with what you do in-camera, so working on your compositional techniques will take you far.
Add to that the right gear and a commitment to improving your post-processing skills, and you have a recipe for creating much-improved smartphone photos, no matter the subject.
